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The pilum (plural ''pila'') was a javelin commonly used by the Roman army in ancient times. It was generally about long overall, consisting of an iron shank about in diameter and long with pyramidal head. The shank was joined to the wooded shaft by either a socket or a flat tang. ==Design== The total weight of a pilum was between , with the versions produced during the earlier Republican era being slightly heavier than those produced in the later Empire era. The iron shank was the key to the function of the pilum. The weapon had a hard pyramidal tip but the shank was made of softer iron. This softness would cause the shank to bend after impact, thus rendering the weapon useless to the enemy who might throw it back. However, there are many cases where the whole shank was hardened, making the pilum more suitable as a close quarters melee weapon, which also made it useful for enemy soldiers to pick it up and throw it back. More importantly, if the pilum struck a shield it might embed itself and thus the bending of the shank would force the enemy to discard it as they might waste time trying to pull it out in the middle of combat. Even if the shank did not bend, the pyramidal tip still made it difficult to pull out. Most other javelins of the time were unable to penetrate a shield. By contrast, since the pyramidal tip of a pilum was wider than the rest of the shank, once it penetrated a shield, it left behind a hole larger than the rest of the shank, and it could move through the shield with little resistance, stabbing the soldier. The length of the shank and its depth of penetration also made it hard to pull out of a shield even if it failed to bend. If the bearer of the shield was charging and a Pilum penetrated the shield, the end of the heavy shaft of the Pilum would hit the ground, holding the shield in place. On some pila there was a spike on the end of the shaft which made it easier to dig into the ground. Pila were divided into two models: heavy and light. Pictorial evidence suggests that some versions of the weapon were weighted by a lead ball to increase penetrative power but archeological specimens of this design variant are not so far known.〔Connolly, 1998, p233.〕 Recent experiments have shown pila to have a range of approximately , although the effective range is up to . An angon was a similar weapon used in late Roman and post-Roman times. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「pilum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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